PRINTING TIME has become an international operation that turns out, almost simultaneously, 3,495,000 copies in the U.S. and 843,000 abroad, in ten printing plants. As of this week, the number is increased to eleven, for this is the first issue to be printed in New Zealand.

Time Inc. does not own its own printing plants, but prefers contract arrangements with local firms--the latest being New Zealand Newspapers, Ltd. in Auckland. Until now, the magazines were flown 1,629 miles from Melbourne, Australia, but henceforth, 35,000 copies will be printed in Auckland, then shipped by air and rail to other points--passing through towns with such colorful Maori names as Te Awamutu, Taumarunui and Ohakune. We expect our New Zealand subscribers to get TIME at least two days earlier.

The purpose of printing in many different places at once is, of course, to get closer to the readers and save shipping time. This has led to increasingly complex logistics. As we approach our Saturday-night deadline, all TIME stories--which have been justified and fitted on perforated paper tape--are transmitted by wire from the Time and Life Building in Manhattan to our chief printing plant, R. R. Donnelley & Sons, in Chicago. There the tapes are reproduced and automatically operate high-speed Linotype machines. After stories are thus set, and page forms completed, Vinylite impressions are made of each page, and these in turn serve as the molds for the curved press plates. Even before Donnelley's 64-page presses start up on Sunday, identical Vinylite molds are on their way by commercial and chartered planes to our other U.S. printing plants, in Washington, Los Angeles, Albany, and Old Saybrook, Conn. In case of hopeless flying weather, the molds go by truck to the nearest clear airport.

Meanwhile, each page has also been recorded on photographic film, which is flown to our printers in Atlanta for the Latin American edition, to Montreal for the Canadian edition, and to Paris, Tokyo, Melbourne and now Auckland for our other regional editions. By Monday noon in Paris, Tuesday noon (one day later because of the international date line) Down Under, Tuesday night in Tokyo, the film has been transformed into offset printing plates.

All this is a long way indeed from issue No. 1, which went to press 42 years ago. It had a run of 25,000--which today would take our combined presses in the U.S. only 15 minutes to produce.

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